Cicatrices
by Nirav
Summary: She was, as always, the one exception to an otherwise undeniable rule.


All the Joes have scars. In their line of work, it's impossible not to have them. Some are obvious—Duke has some on his face that are so worn in and imprinted that imagining him without them is like imagining him without his military haircut and annoyingly unwavering moral compass—and some aren't—Ripcord has one that crosses down over his right hipbone, thick and raised and painful-looking, visible only when he's out of his fatigues and wandering around shirtless in low-slung sweatpants, as he is wont to do when bored. All the scars have stories behind them, and all the stories have a context, and every context carries with it merit and strength and honor when told. The scar stories within the Joes are considered public forum and fair game; if someone can see a scar, they can ask about it.

Except for the exception. And the exception is Scarlet and the latticework scarring on her lower back, spreading over her spine towards her right flank, thick scar tissue stark against her pale skin. Every new Joe in the unit learned one way or another that it was off-limits. She would tell people about the circular one on her left bicep, where she was shot with a .38 on a mission in Somalia; or the parallel stripes on her right calf, three inches long and two apart, where her leg got tangled in rusted barbed wire in Columbia; or the small mass of scar tissue knotted at the base of her neck, often hidden by her hair, from when she and Snake Eyes had to bail out of a speedboat in Australia and she was knocked into the reef. She would talk about those scars as easily as Ripcord boasted about the knife fight that earned him the scar on his hip, with the same quiet confidence and gusto that she exuded when her unbroken records on the shooting simulators came up in conversation, but if the latticed pattern on her back was brought up, her lips would purse together into a thin line, her eyes going cold, and she would march away from the conversation and pretend later that it never happened.

Everyone learned, quickly enough, that it was the one topic that was off-limits; the only time someone had pushed the issue had been when a new recruit arrogantly made a comment about female emotions and weakness as she was walking away. She had paused silently, forcibly buttoning down against the surge of always-unquantifiable and thus always-annoying emotion, before she sauntered back over and punched him in the gut. Snake Eyes and Hawk got ahold of her before she killed him, unquantifiable rage blocking out reminders that the recruit was actually a colleague of hers; he still wound up in the hospital wing with a broken nose, shattered jaw, and four busted ribs. After that, new recruits were pulled aside by whichever veteran decided to take them in and warned quietly that the subject was not to be brought up. Scarlet was the best sharpshooter in the whole elite unit, and everyone knew that the only hand-to-hand fight she'd lost was against a scientifically and nanite-enhanced Ana. No one wanted to end up on her bad side.

Except Ripcord. He wanted to end up on only one side of her—the one that would put her in his bed—but he was certainly not afraid of her. He wasn't afraid to taunt her when they sparred, or challenge her to shooting drills (even if she beat him by a hair every time), or grab a book out from in front of her on a treadmill and threaten to throw it away unless she had dinner with him.

She wondered, after the first time she quarreled with him and his unwavering confidence, when he would ask about her back. It wasn't the first time he saw her without a shirt, stripped down to cargoes and sports bra on a treadmill, though she knew he noticed it. It wasn't the first time he touched them, when her whole right flank was practically perforated by a shotgun blast on a mission in Egypt and he tore her shirt away to treat it with a field dressing and trembling fingers. It wasn't the first time she slept with him, after a few too many beers with the rest of Alpha Team at a hotel bar on leave and his annoying charm as he insisted on walking her back to her room and then pinned her gently against her door and kissed her slowly until she couldn't stop herself from dragging him by dress uniform lapels into her bed.

It was months after that, months of her finding herself falling asleep next to him, in his bed or hers, sweaty and tired and sated, before he did. She was, as usual, on a treadmill in the gym late at night. The quiet of the pit at night was refreshing to her, the usual bustle quieted to the sound of the guard patrols and a few late workers; she was always alone in the gym, with nothing but the sound of her feet lightly impacting the treadmill and a book to occupy her thoughts.

He tried to sneak up on her, as he often did. As usual, it ended in him on the floor with a bruised rib or twisted arm, grinning maddeningly up at her. She rolled her eyes and helped him up, wordlessly leaping back onto the treadmill. The sudden feel of his fingertips brushing against the scars on her back made her stumble, and she slammed her hand down on the emergency stop on the treadmill. She braced her hands on the console in front of her, breathing heavily and trying to will her heart to slow down, praying that he wouldn't ask.

Then he did, and she froze. She tried to make her feet move, to take her away from the room and away from him, to silently and swiftly walk away from the question like she always did. As she forced her feet to move, shoving past Ripcord and towards her room, determinedly ignoring the sound of him following, unwanted memory after memory flashing in front of her eyes.

Her father in his uniform, sitting in his study and watching her with appraising eyes as she went through martial arts katas for his inspection; she was four.

Out in the front yard, sparring with a previously undefeated black belt, knocking him out and turning to her father with pride, only to find herself knocked to the ground with a bleeding lip as he bellowed at her about respect and admonished her for not bowing to her opponent after she knocked him unconscious; she was eight.

At a private shooting range, struggling with a rifle longer than she was tall as she tried to keep up with her father's instructions on the countless parts of the weapon; she was nine.

The last time she disobeyed her father, sneaking out of the house and off base to meet up with a friend and go see a movie. He caught her sneaking back in the window behind the house, guiltily standing on the casing of the outdoor water heater to hoist herself up and grab the ledge of her second-story window; she was suddenly pinned to the ground, the red-hot grating at the base of the water heater scalding her flesh as her father stood over her, foot on her chest to restrict her movement. By the time the tongue-lashing was over with, she had lost feeling in her lower back, the nerve endings burned away and numb from the hot metal. She didn't cry until the next morning in the bathroom, when she had to pull scorched cotton and polyester from her shirt out of the burned flesh; she was twelve.

Scarlet stared at her hands, clenched into fists and pressing tightly against the frame of her door. Ripcord stood quietly behind her, leaning against the opposite wall. All she needed to do was open the door and walk inside; even if he tried to follow her, she could keep him out. Yet her hands remained clenched into fists, white knuckles trembling against the metal of the door frame.

As she tried to calm herself enough to just open the door and go inside, she felt, rather than heard, him push away from the wall he was leaning on. One came to rest on her right hip, carefully perched away from the troublesome pattern of scars; the other gently pushed the hair off of the back of her neck as he kissed that one spot, where her neck met her shoulder, that always caused her eyes to roll into the back of her head and her breath hitch.

Finally torn out of her frozen stance by the feel of his lips on her neck, she spun around, avoiding his eyes as she pulled him in for a rough kiss. She fumbled behind her back for the doorknob, finally wrenching it open and letting him walker her backwards into her small room, until they fell in a tangle of lips and limbs to the mattress.

She woke later that night—it had to be closer to morning by then—to the feel of his lips on her back, tracing down her spinal cord. Her breath caught again when his fingers traced over the scars on her back and he asked again, murmuring the question against her damp skin.

She thought inadvertently of when she spoke to him after losing the fight against Ana, how it was the first time she'd lost and she didn't know how to handle it. Where her father would have slapped her for the loss, he just shrugged and told her that everyone lost something sometime. Flippant. Blasé. Casual. Understanding.

With a slow breath in, she closer her eyes, resting her head on her folded forearms as he continued his attentions to her back; even if he was occupied, she knew he would listen. Breathing out, she started to speak.

"I was twelve."


End file.
